THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 145 



deposits only one egg in each cell ; but these eggs 

 in the queenless hive have been laid in a curiously 

 haphazard way. The eggs are straggled over the 

 comb. Two or three cells have been furnished at 

 one spot and a few more at another, without the 

 slightest attempt at the usual order and system. 

 Moreover, some cells contain single eggs, but 

 others two, or even three, apiece. It looks as if 

 some demented mother-bee from another hive had 

 caught her keepers napping, and had made sur- 

 reptitious excursion into the queenless stock. But 

 the most careful search through the hive will reveal 

 no queen, nor is one to be found. The explanation 

 of the vagary is that one of the workers has, in 

 some extraordinary way, succeeded in rousing her 

 atrophied nature, and has become capable of laying 

 eggs. Yet the doom of the colony is not delayed 

 by this, but rather hastened ; for these eggs will 

 produce only drones, and thus still more useless 

 mouths to feed. In one well-authenticated case, 

 the bees of a queenless colony built a queen-cell, 

 and actually transplanted to it one of these eggs 

 laid by a fertile worker, a dead drone being after- 

 wards found in the cell. 



How the laying worker is produced under the 

 spur of the national crisis can only be a matter 

 for speculation, but probably the youngest bee 

 of the colony is plied with the special food usually 

 given to queens, and thus her generative faculties 

 are, to a certain extent, developed. 

 10 



